KSU Trumbull graduation: Future awaits
Graduates prepared
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WARREN -- Addressing her fellow graduates, Marissa Lemasters detailed the struggles she faced when she began studying at Kent State University at Trumbull in 2018.
"When I started my undergrad experience, I had so much anxiety, I couldn't leave my house unless I had a Polaroid picture of my cat in my pocket everywhere I went," she said.
Lemasters, of Newton Falls, said upon enrolling at KSU's Trumbull branch and becoming involved on campus, including joining the honors program, she became less anxious and more confident.
"To this day, I credit Kent State for shaping me into the confident individual who isn't afraid to admit that change is really scary," she said.
Lemasters was the student speaker at Kent Trumbull's commencement ceremony Friday at Packard Music Hall. She graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in business management and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology.
Right now, Lemasters is already active in the field of marketing and content creation. She has amassed an Instagram following of nearly 13,000 followers and recently launched a podcast titled "Thoughts?"
Lemasters is also an LLC called M. Creative Content & Digital Marketing.
"I'm really focusing on small businesses and events like weddings, community events," she said. "I like to go there and get behind the scenes, get all the videos and then I make them into little (Instagram) Reels and TikToks for advertisements."
Another graduate honored during commencement Friday was Jonathan Holmes of Mesopotamia, who earned his Bachelor of Science in nursing.
"We start with the fundamentals of nursing and go all the way through to pediatrics, obstetrics, psych, critical care and then our capstone program is kind of the preceptorship," he said.
Holmes said he did his 144-hour preceptorship in the emergency room at St. Joseph Warren Hospital.
"That was a great experience," he said. "A lot of skills, a lot of challenges, it was a good time."
Holmes said he works at Hopewell, a therapeutic farm community in Mesopotamia.
"My plan is to go on and keep working there, but using my degree and my license to advance my career," Holmes said.
Another graduate, Kenzie Gray, commuted to Kent Trumbull from Brecksville to be part of the university's veterinary technology program.
"We did a little bit of everything," Gray said. "We did small animals like dogs and cats. Farm animals like horses, exotics, think like that."
Gray said she and her fellow students learned "a little bit of everything" when it comes to caring for animals.
Some of the skills Gray learned while at Kent Trumbull were anesthesia, restraint skills, dentistry, injections and radiology.
"I started the program straight out of high school," Gray said. "I started working at a clinic by my house as an assistant and then I just loved it so I went to school for it."
Gray said she plans to stay at KSU to pursue a bachelor's degree. She said she is planning to do school online to avoid the hour-long commute.
"I absolutely loved it to be honest with you," Gray said of Kent Trumbull. "It's a very small class size but I couldn't imagine myself being at a bigger school. Everyone was super close. The teachers were super personable, it was great. It was honestly awesome."
The commencement speaker was Jeffrey M. Magada, founder and executive director of Flying HIGH Inc. in Youngstown. Magada is also a licensed social worker and the author of "The Good Life: You Can Walk in God's Perfect Will," published in 2011.
"What needs will you meet?" Magada asked the graduates. "What innovation will you come up with? How many lives in our community will benefit from you? We'll have to wait and see, but I know there's some great things that you're going to accomplish."